short stories - Name/Author of story of heart surgeon who corrects alligator hearts and makes dragons

There's an old ( Ancient?) story I recall from a collection, but not well enough to locate on Google ( It keeps giving me biographies of cardiac transplant surgeons ). A famous British IIRC surgeon pioneers corrective surgery for heart defects. the narrator of the tale, a close friend of the surgeon, points out to him that an alligators hearts could be thought of as "deformed" in ways when compared to other animals even among reptiles. The surgeon speculates if this could be a true mutation deformity and sets out to "correct" it surgically in a group of test subjects. The alligators survive, and like neotonous animals exposed to hormones, grow further, sprout wings, and literally become dragons. Anyone recognize the story?

Answer

This is The Day of the Dragon, by Guy Endore. (He's credited as "Guy Endor" in the linked reproduction but appears as "Endore" on Wikipedia and IMDb.) A Professor Crabshaw endeavors to cure alligators' congenital heart conditions:

"'Well,' Crabshaw went on before I could interrupt, 'it occurred to me one day to see what would happen if that bad heart condition of the alligator were cleared up or at least improved by stretching that incomplete septum to form a dividing wall between the venous and the arterial blood streams."

Clever readers might predict the outcome: The "cured" gators grow into dragons!

"There were my beasts, growing larger every day, greater now then elephants in the bulk of their torso and the parasol-like growth on their backs expanding and expanding, and shaping itself out into two vast ovals, one on each side. Then, on day, it came to me, suddenly, what these were: wings! Yes, sir, wings!"

Crabshaw's well-intentioned endeavor has some unfortunate effects:

"Too late then to fight the vermin that had obtained such a foot hold in our world. Alas - no longer our world, but the world of the dragons who have become supreme!"

Comments

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...

Blog

Search This Blog